When selecting the channels you want to use in a business or marketing campaign, you need to make a decision based on the channel’s functionality, availability, ease of use, and connection to your business objective. Read more ›

As previously explored on the blog, there are a set of UK PLCs who exhibit the traits of a company that has gained a digital advantage. Specifically these firms have greater revenue efficiency, calculated as a function of the revenue per employee and return on assets, and profitability. Read more ›

For the first time, I’ve published directly to LinkedIn rather than using the blog. Balancing Digital’s Pains and Gains examines how digital leaders need to make a strong case for investment in digital whilst also acknowledging the pain points that are to be faced. My argument is that investment is more likely to come when we have acknowledged why the transformation to digital will be hard and described how we will handle it.

To answer some of the points that have come up after posting, I thought I’d return to this blog.

The first comment from Paul Francis states:

If you need to convince people of the benefit, you as a “digital professional” can bring to their business, you are arguably better off spending that effort with somebody who already realises this. There are no shortage of takers if you look in the right places. The rest will either be out of business or didn’t your help in the first place.

A valid point as there are many companies that fully understand the gains of digital. Why waste our time educating and persuading executives who don’t. To answer Paul’s question, I find myself attempting to convince people for two reasons. Firstly it’s my job as a digital transformation consultant to help businesses transform to digital and this endeavour often requires me to be an evangelist for digital.

The second reason, which is far more important, is that I often passionately believe in what digital could do for a client. When I see a great business that isn’t taking full advantage of digital, I just want to help them see things as I do. I want them to see what a digitised customer experience could look like or how they could pivot their business model to a digital one.

The second comment from Gavin Scott said:

Interesting points. I’ve recently been having conversations around this, as “digital” seems to bring its own level of complexity to this issue. In siloed businesses, this means painting pictures for different audiences.

I’m a firm believer in that the business should drive digital transformation with clear business goals. But we shouldn’t be afraid to involve different parts of the organization in defining these SMART gains, for example, IT. It will help paint a much better picture that engages the organization as a whole and bring everyone on board.

Completely agree. If digital transformation is led from a single silo (be it marketing, customer experience or digital), you risk creating another silo. Digital should touch every part of a business and, therefore, should definitely not be siloed. IT should be especially involved in the agenda. Consequently, it is necessary for the transformation leaders to communicate the pains and gains of digital transformation to each specific audience in turn. Furthermore, the communication should be targeted on the things that matter most to that group of the business.

Thanks to Gavin and Paul for engaging in the discussion. If you have anything to ask or add, please add it below in the comments.

Sorry for the delay in this week’s post – been busy working. Time for something a little different; I’ve attempted to reverse engineer the research by MIT and my former employer Capgemini on digital leadership. Essentially they found that digital leaders enjoy greater revenue efficiency and profitability. Read more ›

Back in 1967, management guru, Peter Drucker wrote a seminal article called the “Manager and the Moron”. No this isn’t an article about your boss. It’s about your computer, smart phone or wearable device. Drucker saw an upcoming shift towards knowledge work rather than skilled labour and how this economic transformation would be powered by the computer – the Moron. Read more ›

“Being happily and successfully married is generally not so much a matter of marrying the right person as it is being the right person.” – Howard W Hunter

An off topic post today but an important one about marriage. This weekend Elizabeth and I celebrated eleven years of marriage together. As we went out to celebrate last night we discussed three principles that have helped us have a happy marriage. Read more ›

Phones4U was placed into administration today in unusual circumstances. Normally administrators are called in when the cash runs out at a business. In this case, Phones4U ran out of suppliers despite making a reported £100m in profits. For whatever reasons (and there is a lot of speculation about the reasons) O2, Vodafone and then finally EE didn’t see fit to renew distribution agreements with Phone4U. This post will investigate what two management models can teach us about the business model challenges at Phones4U. Read more ›

Following Barack Obama’s launch of the US Digital Service and the publication of the Digital Services Playbook (I’m sure there was an apostrophe due in that), I wanted to modify the plays and opening statement for private sector CEOs. Read more ›